Honest question about cartridge vs. turntable performance.

Dear OP,

As I believe your question was about acquiring a nice/substantial upgrade in your vinyl set-up. If I may presume you are reasonably happy with your MMF 5.1. My best guess is that you will absolutely make a very fine upgrade with a new (and hopefully better) cartridge. Changing your turntable while holding on to the Ortofon Black would just be a sidestep. I do not think you will gain much.
I am not familiar with your particular player. But I was triggered by some denigrating remarks considering your Music Hall and the whole breed of belt driven turntables. I really think this is complete and utter foolishness. To put it mildly. And a sure sign serious audiophiles can be anally retentive snobs. 
So, back to the original question, when happy with the player, what cart? There are quite a few possibilities, but there are some restrictions as well. I have no idea if your preamp can accommodate LOMC's. You have got to take the Project 9 arm in account (11gr, medium to lightish, total mass). And your budget. Wold you like to try a MM/MI cart? Or would a HOMC do? Is shopping in the 'vintage corner' not too daunting? Mind you, people who appreciate such fine differences will verbally go to war for their weapon of choice. I am familiar with old LOMC's as the Denon 301 or Supex 900. And I have given the HOMC's ( Denon 160, Dyna 10x4/2 a fair share of black circles. But all in different tonearms. And they were vintage, but I sure wouldn't mind mounting the in a Pro-Ject 9 arm.  So, I am sure there are quite a few very knowledgeable folk around for some more modern choices. I am looking forward to your solutions!

Kind regards, StefV

It isn't an either or situation.

Mind exercise:

A cartridge can put out X - X= 100%  That's if it were held perfectly in the air with no external vibrations affecting it.

Attach it to an arm on a turntable with interconnects to a phono preamp etc. and depending on the capabilities of each, they will subtract a varying amount from the 100% that the cartridge is theoretically capable of producing.

Is a great cartridge on a so-so table better than a more modest cartridge on a great turntable? I don't know for sure and I'm not sure anyone else does either, but if you start with a good cartridge and then use and upgrade the rest of the gear along the way, at least you will be able to hear what each change does.

Nothing further down the chain can remedy a weakness in a component up near the top of the chain. It can just allow you to lose less of what came out of the record/cartridge interface in the first place.

You guys are right; I apologize for my part in digressing from the real topic of the thread. To the OP, I would say that my experience over the last 10-12 years, with running up to 5 turntables using 5 different tonearms with dozens of different cartridges is that you should consider the cartridge and tonearm as a unit, a closed system.  The SQ from any given cartridge, no matter how expensive or how cheap, and no matter how it transduces physical motion to an electrical signal (MM, MI, or MC), is highly dependent upon the tonearm/headshell into which it is mounted.  Mating cartridges to tonearms for optimum results has in my experience been a hit or miss affair (after one has done the homework to make at least a good mating), in terms of max results, but you can get "good" results by thoughtful matching done on an empirical basis.  After that, turntables each have their own character which seems to remain fairly constant regardless of the tonearm/cartridge mounted on a given one. Also, to a large degree, where a tonearm has exchangeable headshells, you can manipulate the result by experimenting with various headshells.  So, I never think of the relative importance of a cartridge and a turntable per se.

Thing is, turntables don’t wear out after 1000 hours. Neither do tonearms. So look at TT, tonearm, and cartridge costs over 10 years.

For the record, I had a 10K belt drive TT. Then I built my DIY air bearing TT. Same tonearm on each table. The air bearing TT sounded far better with a budget cartridge than the commercial TT with a higher end Koetsu. Wife agreed. But DIY TT + Koetsu = heaven.

Also, that Koetsu takes real trouble to set up optimally, and a lesser tonearm can’t do it. It's a matter of alignment, which requires both stability and the capacity for fine adjustments.

Finally, before you spend big bucks on a cartridge, try to make sure that your stylus wears slowly. That means ultrasonic record cleaning and strict record hygiene. I do both, and my Koetsu stylus has minimal wear at 1000 hours. If that’s too much trouble, then definitely do not spend serious money on a serious cartridge until you win the lottery.

I agree with Lewm about the cartridge / tonearm combination. Also, that TT's are pretty much independent of either.

So why not spend the money where you can be sure of good results? That is, the TT.